Please log in

or

Register now for free

or

Choose your profile *

Email *

A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail.

Password *

Username *

Sign up to our newsletters

Higher education updates from the THE editorial team

World University Rankings news

Student newsletters

Send me special offers and marketing info from THE and selected partners

Mother wins top prize for science

Chemist Carol Robinson proved this week that women can raise a family and excel
in science, when she won a Royal Society award for her work.

Professor Robinson, an expert in protein interactions based at Cambridge
University, has won the £30,000 Rosalind Franklin award for outstanding
contributions to science. Although now regarded as a world leader in her field,
there was a time when Professor Robinson felt that having three children had
shut her out of science forever.

She said: "I've had a very unconventional career, with an eight-year career
break to have a family. Many people say you can't do this sort of job with
children."

Professor Robinson will use part of her prize money to fund a mentoring project
for female scientists and engineers. With no senior female scientists to hand,
her own mentors were men. But she said their support was invaluable
nonetheless: "I don't think anyone is really standing behind junior women
academics saying, 'You must do this!'"

The award, launched last year, is funded by the government's Office of Science
and Technology as part of its campaign to address the underrepresentation of
women in science, engineering and technology.

Despite being instrumental in the discovery of the structure of DNA, Rosalind
Franklin struggled to gain recognition in a male-dominated field.

It was her X-ray diffraction images that pointed to the double-helix structure
of the DNA molecule. She died in 1958, four years before the male scientists
involved in the discovery - Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins -
were awarded the Nobel prize.

As a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, Professor Robinson has access to
Dr Franklin's notebooks, which are stored there. "I'm going to poke around them
for inspiration," she said.